Redaksionele voorwoord / Editor's preface

Abstract

From text: Art and history in critical interaction is the topic of Gerhard Schoeman’s extended contribution on Felix in exile (1994), one of the “animated films” by William Kentrdige, at present the most renowned South African visual artist on the international arts scene. An enduring feature of Kentridge’s many self-reflexive art projects, reaffirmed by Schoeman’s approach to this single case, is the endeavour to visually project processes of personal and social transformation taking place in South Africa critically within broader world history frames. Related in some respects to Mieke Bal’s “preposterous history”, the theoretical concept of history which Schoeman deploys by far outweighs his tracing of certain art historical references.